"Epicene" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impressionable males. Cupid unseen mingled in the throng and shot his arrows right and left, not always with the best result, as many post-nuptial experiences showed. There was talk of the gentle art of needlework, of the latest bazaar and the agreeable address delivered thereat by Mr Cargrim; the epicene pastime of lawn tennis was touched upon; and ardent young persons discussed how near they could go to Giant Pope's cave without getting into the clutches of its occupant. The young men talked golfing, parish work, horses, church, male millinery, polo and shooting; the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... before them crying out, "Slack, my master!"; and they after me with faces and heads bare and all shrieking, "Alas! Alas for the man!" Now there remained none in the quarter, neither man nor woman, nor epicene, nor youth nor maid, nor child nor old trot, but went with us smiting their faces and weeping bitterly, and I led them leisurely through the whole city. The folk asked them what was the matter, whereupon they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... smile. The ballets, obviously fabricated by the same persons as the costumes, had no plot, no beginning and no end. Crude amateurishness was the characteristic of these honest and hard-working professionals, who somehow contrived to be neither men nor women—and assuredly not epicene—but who travelled from country town to country town in a glamour of posters, exciting the towns, in spite of a perfect lack of sex, because they were the fabled Russian dancers. The Moot Hall was crammed with adults and their cackling offspring, who heartily applauded the ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... the epicene theorists of modern times may deny it, it is nevertheless a truth plainly visible in the whole past history of the sexes that the natural condition of a woman is to find her master in a man. Look in the face of any woman who is in no direct way dependent on a man: and, as certainly ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... which the sheep are said to devour; in fact, I do not see how they could eat the grass without taking them in, and these contribute to give the mutton its delicate flavour. Snails are curious beings. Being epicene, they conduct their wooings on the mutual give and take principle, which would save human beings a great deal of spasmodic flirtation, and abolish the whole femme incomprise business, besides a great many bad novels, if we could adopt it. When winter comes, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... boats with steps, like those at Malta, is sensible enough. Fine bold swimmers struck out well beside me in the water while I had my morning dip from the yawl. As for the epicene bathing—masculine women and womanish males who partake of "sea-bathing by machinery"—separate machines, but that is ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... do. I pronounce it again, Nobilis is no rake. To be of that order, he must be vicious against his will, and not so by study or application. All Pretty Fellows are also excluded to a man, as well as all Inamaratos, or persons of the epicene gender, who gaze at one another in the presence of ladies. This class, of which I am giving you an account, is pretended to also by men of strong abilities in drinking; though they are such whom the liquor, not the conversation, keeps together. But blockheads may roar, fight, and stab, and ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... when from his window he could see their splendid vigor and beauty; even while Moadine, as patient and friendly as if she had never helped Alima to hold and bind him, sat there in the room, the picture of wisdom and serene strength. "Sexless, epicene, undeveloped neuters!" he went on bitterly. He sounded like ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... legitimate limits of right reason, and in common with that of some ridiculed philosopher of Roundhead times, is the prudent saying, "Whoever's king, I'll be subject!"—ay, and for the masculine I place the epicene. While, however, in sober practice of right subordination, and under existing circumstances of just rule, we gladly would amplify the maxim, (as in courtesy, gallantry, loyalty, and honest kind feeling strongly bound,) still in mere speculation, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... But this epicene state of enjoyment was not long to last. A fresh-coloured native, with a prodigious breadth of face, only to be surpassed by his prodigious breadth of shoulders, approached, and addressed us in a brogue so strong, that it would, like the boatswain's grog, have floated a marlin-spike, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard |
